There Are No Shortcuts

Josiah Igono, PhD, CSCS, delivers his wisdom as a former elite athlete and sports psychologist that was most recently with the Texas Rangers as their peak performance coach. If you are serious about improving at your craft this deserves your attention.

Josiah properly defines performance from a sports psychology standpoint as “How efficiently does this individual perform said task or function?” In our instant gratification world, people are always looking for a shortcut to get what they want. Whether in the form of “get rich quick” schemes, life-hacking, or the self help world, there is no shortage of false promises of an easier path. The reality is, life hacks and shortcuts are not a long term solution for performance. They may work for a little while, but to achieve a high level of sustained performance it takes something else.

“Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,he was the godfather of this concept that we have used now called flow, right? He said that when he studied all these high level performers, he said that one of the things that they all had in common or that the majority of them had in common was that they had an autotelic personality, meaning auto is self, telos is reward. The work itself is my reward, right? The work itself is my reward.” Josiah has worked with elite competitors in completely different professions and has seen this himself firsthand. I know I have seen how passion is an important ingredient to attaining peak performance.

“In terms of mental performance, I think the thing that I would say is that, in anything, whether it is weight loss, whether it is athletic performance, whether it is in raising children, whether it is in becoming healthier, performing better on the field as an athlete, as a coach, what's your plan, do you have a plan? I think that's the very first question that everyone needs to ask themselves is, do I have a plan? If that answer is no, we start there, you know what I'm saying? We start there. And then we look for individuals, coaches, professionals who can help augment our specific skillset, our specific personality type, and learning style to move forward.” The importance of planning and the commitment to the plan cannot be understated. You need to have a plan before you can accomplish anything worthwhile.

The basics of improving mental performance focus on your thoughts, the way you speak, and then your actions. Josiah, in describing the basic foundation, makes it as easy as “Think, Say, Do.” These three simple pillars define whether you are thinking positively or negatively. What kind of language and self-talk do you use? And then what are your actions? What are you doing that will bring change to achieve the outcome you desire? Self-reflection and attitude should always be evaluated as this is something you can control.

The first step of implementing any plan is to identify the outcome you want. “First, what are your goals? And then from there, we can take the science, we can take the methods, we can take the research, we can take the tools, we can take the applications that exist for what you want to do and apply them.” Once you understand what you want to achieve you can work backward to deconstruct what it will take to get there. This type of emphasis on mental performance is now common at the elite levels of sport. The best athletes that stay at the top of their game for long periods of time must spend time and resources developing their mental conditioning. I am looking forward to more from Josiah on the next podcast.